From 2008 to 2016 Tufts faculty and alumni played critical roles in developing the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center's Wind Technology Testing Center and the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal. Our hands-on experience with these first-of-a-kind infrastructure projects set the course for our research and education focus on offshore wind infrastructure, supply chain, and transmission.
In 2016, our faculty helped to lead the POWER-US convening initiative which resulted in the 2018 "Reaching Convergence" and "Ocean Test Bed" white papers. In 2019 we launched the nation’s first graduate program specifically focused on offshore wind infrastructure, supply chain, and transmission.
There often can be a disconnect between engineering questions and the policy questions, when in fact they need to be integrated. There will be environmentally protected areas, for instance, that we can't be moving cables through, so where can we actually put them? That's not only a technical, scientific question, but also a social, economic, and political issue.
